looking at past reviews

Lately, I feel that I have to work on the quality of my writing. Since I started to write and submit papers to conferences 2,5 years ago, I experimented a lot with writing style, putting the focus on various hypotheses and working out different story lines. I guess the outcomes were quite okay as the majority of my contributions were accepted and I could present my research at different conferences. It was also nice to try out different things and see if they work out.

However, as I’ve been reading in blogs from other scholars about how they proceed with their papers and articles I learned that they spend a lot more time  working on their articles. They seem to have a better time management and allow several loops (work on the draft, put it aside, revise the first version, have a trusted colleague revise it, … ) until they finally submit.

I usually sit down several days (more or less) in a row, write the article and submit it. Looking at the reviews from accepted and rejected papers, I understand that sometimes the message of my writing could be clearer. Also, the reviewers stated several times that they would like to know more about where the hypotheses come from and the supporting facts. Reading one of Prof. Ishikura’s blog posts, I see that these are the things other writers struggle with, too. But these are also the characteristics that, for readers, make an article worth-wile spending time on. (And, also important, worth-wile using as a reference…)

So, I conclude from these points that I should use a more structured approach to writing AND take more time to work and revise.

I am also putting together a document with all the reviewers’ comments I got so far. Based on this, I will work out a list of the points that reviewers most commented on and which I will pay special attention to in the future.

Second, I will follow The Two Week Method by Tanya Golash-Boza. This means I will work on a chapter of my thesis or an article for two weeks. Then, I will put it aside or give it to my supervisor. After that, I will work on it again for two weeks. Combined with Thomas Basbøll’s structured approach (e.g. in Five at a Time) of dividing an article into paragraphs, claims, etc. this should work quite well.

Writing is a funny task. On the one hand, it is something creative and it doesn’t work that well when you’re under pressure. On the other hand, its objective (particularly in scholarly writing) is to produce something well-structured, with a strong story line and a clear message. However, creativity and structure are not mutually exclusive. I would rather say (now, after 2-and-a-half-years of writing reguarly) they require each other in order to be successful.

Let’s see. Another experiment…

pkm for professional translators

The second workshop on Personal Knowledge Management, PKM2010 will take place on September 12th, 2010 in Duisburg in the course of the German HCI Conference Mensch und Computer 2010. This workshop is “about Understanding, Supporting, and Evaluating the Management of Personal Knowledge, Information and Data”. I will give a short presentation on how professional translators (can) manage their personal knowledge and how this connects with their social interaction on the web. Depending on the progress of my research, I will also present the results of my pre-tests to demonstrate the methodology my scientific work is based on. Like always, the slide deck and the paper will be made available to you here, on vokabelaustausch.

*yooouupiiieeee*

One day prior to the ICIC 2010 conference (the International Conference on Intercultural Collaboration) which will take place on August 19 and 20, 2010 in Copenhagen, DK, there will be a Doctoral Workshop for Ph.D. students who do research in the field of intercultural collaboration to get together and discuss their research work.

Luckily, I was accepted to attend the workshop. *yooupiiee*
According to the call, there will be up to 14 other Ph.D. students at the event and I am very much looking forward to meeting them and exchanging ideas and opinions with them. We will also have the chance to attend ICIC 2010. The conference program is not yet available but the keynote speakers and their topics already look very promising and I’m hoping to get deeper insights and inspiration from them.

You can access my application paper here.

academic search engine optimization

We strive for being cited. We want to occupy the “references” sections of the scientific world. Google Scholar’s hit list is our red carpet.
However, many scientists spent too little time thinking about how to improve their rankings on search engine hit lists like Google Scholar. blog.scholarz.net even says papers which are not listed on Google Scholars do simply not exist for many researchers and will therefore never receive much attention. In their paper Academic Search Engine Optimization (ASEO): Optimizing Scholarly Literature for Google Scholar and Co., Jöran Beel, Bela Gipp, and Erik Wilde show how a scientific paper may be optimized for academic and regular search engines.
Very interesting is the discussion the authors include as their section 4 of the paper where they cite two reviewers expressing a critical attitude towards what the authors call “Academic Search Engine Optimization” (ASEO):

I’m not a big fan of this area of research […]. I know it’s in the call for papers, but I think that’s a mistake.

And:

[This] paper seems to encourage scientific paper authors to learn Google scholar’s ranking method and write papers accordingly to boost ranking [which is not] acceptable to scientific communities which are supposed to advocate true technical quality/impact instead of ranking.

In my opinion, being interested in how (academic) search engines function and how scientific papers are indexed and, of course, responding to these… well… circumstances of the scientific citing business is just natural.
Moreover, the trouble is homemade: If scientists (that means: we) limit their (our) literature research basis to Google Scholar’s hit lists and do not set great store of in-depth research, digging, detective work, and being creative in finding the right papers to substantiate their own scientific findings and ideas they cut off their own noses to spite their faces. Its almost the same phenomenon as we know it from the “old” citing business: The more famous the author you cite is, the better is your citation and the scientific work supposed to be. So, in the course of time, more and more people cite less and less authors while the number of the citations taken from their papers keeps growing. And the higher the number of citations is, the more they will be cited.

Still, little wonders oftentimes hide in secret spaces… maybe on your trusted library’s dusty shelves, maybe in a references section of an unbeknown scientist’s paper, or even ranked 10’034th on Google Scholar’s hit list.

i-know 2009

From September 2nd – 4th, the 9th International Conference on Knowledge Management and Knowledge Technologies took place in Graz, Austria. The i-Know conference was just great: great people, great coffee, great talks, great presentations. And Graz is a truly beautiful city. I was lucky and had the chance to do a poster presentation. Have a look…

Poster iKnow 2009

… and read the paper I wrote in a joint effort with Benjamin Adrian (DFKI Kaiserslautern) and Prof. Gerhard Budin (University of Vienna).

Abstract:

Professional translation services are often perceived as quite expensive and people tend to go for the lowest price possible when commissioning a translation. To stay capable of competing with lay translators, professional translators have to continuously increase the efficiency of their work process. Researching information consumes a considerable part of the time needed for producing a high-quality translation. This work evaluates whether Web 2.0 applications with their social and collaborative characteristics have the potential to support the professional translator in his daily work. Here the main focus of attention is on a possible increase in efficiency of search and knowledge management processes. In phase one of the study we conducted a survey to determine the translator’s preferred search tactics, knowledge resources, and communication channels. Secondly, we conducted user tests on a Web 2.0 social media sharing platform followed by open interviews to find further evidence for the potential of Web 2.0-based collaborative applications in the professional translator’s business.

-> …on a personal note: Thank you, Leo, for the button!